Will Hillary take one for the team?
Not a lot of good news for Hillary Clinton this week:
- New Backing for Obama As Party Seeks Unity from the WSJ: "Slowly but steadily, a string of Democratic Party figures is taking Barack Obama's side in the presidential nominating race and raising the pressure on Hillary Clinton to give up. Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota is expected to endorse Sen. Obama Monday... (and) North Carolina's seven Democratic House members are poised to endorse Sen. Obama as a group before that state's May 6 primary... What makes such endorsements significant is that they're from superdelegates... Since the "Super Tuesday" primaries on Feb. 5, Sen. Obama has won commitments from 64 superdelegates and Sen. Clinton has gotten nine. Sen. Obama has a total of 217 superdelegates in his camp while Sen. Clinton has 250, and her margin has been shrinking with each week."
- Cash-strapped Clinton fails to pay bills from Politico: "Hillary Rodham Clinton’s cash-strapped presidential campaign has been putting off paying hundreds of bills for months — freeing up cash for critical media buys but also earning the campaign a reputation as something of a deadbeat in some small-business circles. A pair of Ohio companies owed more than $25,000 by Clinton for staging events for her campaign are warning others in the tight-knit event production community — and anyone else who will listen — to get their cash upfront when doing business with her. Their cautionary tales, combined with published reports about similar difficulties faced by a New Hampshire landlord, an Iowa office cleaner and a New York caterer, highlight a less-obvious impact of Clinton’s inability to keep up with the staggering fundraising pace set by her opponent for the Democratic presidential nomination, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama.
"If she had paid off the $8.7 million in unpaid bills she reported as debt and had not loaned her campaign $5 million, she would have been nearly $3 million in the red at the end of February. By contrast, if you subtract Obama’s $625,000 in debts and his general-election-only money from his total cash on hand at the end of last month, he’d still be left with $31 million." - Gallup Daily: Obama Now at 52% to Clinton’s 42%: "Barack Obama has extended his lead over Hillary Clinton among Democrats nationally to 52% to 42%, the third consecutive Gallup Poll Daily tracking report in which he has held a statistically significant lead, and Obama's largest lead of the year so far. This marks the first time either candidate has held a double-digit lead over the other since Feb. 4-6, at which point Clinton led Obama by 11 percentage points."
2 comments:
I would like the democratic process to continue. I don't know, last time I looked this was America.
I think some of this "democratic process" and "this is America" talk obscures the point. The question isn't if she CAN continue running, it's if she SHOULD keep running and if it's in the best interest of the party and the country.
Over on the GOP side, Huckabee and Romney could've kept running. There was no legal reason for them to quit. They did so because they felt they couldn't win and thus, continuing to run would damage the McCain's chances of beating the Democrats.
As a Democrat, I think the math is pretty easy. Assuming Hillary cannot win (and there are plenty of articles online that point out she cannot possibly surpass Obama's delegate total prior to the convention), what do the Democrats gain and lose by her running?
Possible positive benefits include more media attention, I suppose (but it's attention on how the two candidates are sniping at each other, which doesn't seem very helpful.) What else does her presence in the campaign bring to her party?
And what are the negative impacts of Hillary continuing to run? Let's list them:
- The party continues to split rather than come together
- Hillary criticisms of Obama may stick in the general election
- Money that could flow to the party nominee will instead go to helping a candidate that cannot win
- Obama's focus is on running against Hillary, not McCain, which helps the GOP candidate. McCain's relaxing and flying under the radar while Hillary tries to undermine Obama's credibility.
- Greater focus is brought to the Michigan and Florida issues, causing more bad feelings in those states and calling into question some party member's donations
- Obama is forced to spend more money in the time before the convention--money he could save for the costly general election.
You're right--this is America. Does Hillary Clinton want an America with another Republican in charge for four more years, or does she want an America with her own party in the lead?
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